New Video Shows 2016 Was An Awesome Year For Video Games

There were a lot of hidden gems released throughout 2016 that a lot of gamers may have missed. So what better way to highlight what awesome games were released in the year than with a compilation video highlighting these titles?

The video compilation clocks in at just under two minutes and features a wide range of games that YouTuber Malcolm Klock put together for the gaming audience at large.

The video starts with a quick collage of some of the biggest AAA titles released throughout the year, including DICE's Battlefield 1 and Naughty Dog's Uncharted 4. We also get a clip of Captain Reyes from Infinity Ward's Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare.

The first few seconds are front profile shots, mostly zooming out from the characters. We see Adam Jensen from Deus Ex: Mankind Divided and Emily Kaldwin from Dishonored 2. We see various clips from Overwatch, Dark Souls 3 and even more of Uncharted 4.

The collage doesn't just focus on the big name games, though. We get indie gems from creative masterminds, such as Playdead Studios breakout hit Inside, or Heart Machine's criminally under-promoted Hyper Light Drifter.

Visually zen games like Abzu also make the cut, which was seriously robbed of a win for best art direction during this past year's Game Awards show.

We get to see some clips of games forgotten due to ill timing or the media just not paying much mind to them, such as ColdWood Interactive's Unravel. It was probably the most sentimental game of the year alongside That Dragon, Cancer. EA really took a risk on the puzzle-platformer but it paid off in spades as far as silent storytelling and emotional connections with a piece of yarn were concerned.

Cyan's Obduction gets a small nod, but only briefly. We then get shots of Square Enix's decade-long project, Final Fantasy XV, a game that left a lot of people heartbroken, angry, satisfied, perplexed, confused and everything else in between. I don't think there was a game that had people so invested in story surrounding a group of characters this year than Tabata's depressingly dark JRPG tale.

But not all of the emotional investments to characters centered solely around tragic, Greek endings. Some of the games featured in the collage had players invested due to how well the characters were portrayed, even when you couldn't actually see them... such as Campo Santo's Firewatch.

Familiar faces pop up in the compilation, such as Agent 47 from the Hitman series, which took on the unique AAA episodic model instead of the traditional $60 release. Gamers were reminded of more indie gems such as Stoic Studios' gripping and unrelenting Norse tale, The Banner Saga 2. It was one of 2016's early highlights.

Oxenfree, Gears of War 4 and The Division also made the cut, along with Mirror's Edge: Catalyst, Steins; Gate and Quantum Break. We also managed to get short snippets of games like DOOM and Telltale's Batman to round out the video. Whether you liked the offerings in 2016 or not, you have to admit that there were a ton of games released this year that were widely diverse in their offerings, gameplay and thematic elements.